Facebook Rebuts Netflix Documentary 'The Social Dilemma' (cnbc.com) 39
Facebook on Friday offered a rebuttal to the hit Netflix documentary-drama, "The Social Dilemma." The movie revealed, perhaps for the first time to some viewers, how social networks use algorithms to keep people coming back. It also addressed how tech companies have influenced elections, ethnic violence and rates of depression and suicide. Some viewers said they were deleting Facebook and Instagram after watching it. From a report: The rebuttal suggests that Facebook may be worried that the documentary's effects on usage. "The Social Dilemma" appeared in Netflix's top ten most popular movies and TV shows list in September and is still listed in its Trending section. In a post published on its site, Facebook addressed several concerns it has with the movie, covering topics like addiction, users being "the product," its algorithms, data privacy, polarization, elections and misinformation. "Rather than offer a nuanced look at technology, it gives a distorted view of how social media platforms work to create a convenient scapegoat for what are difficult and complex societal problems," Facebook said. It said the documentary sensationalizes social networks and provides a distorted view to how they work.
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Dude, the one time the topic is exactly what you're complaining about and all you do is paste the same pre-written shit as in all other threads? If you can't even be bothered to write something on-topic, why the fuck should we care what you have to say?
The movie is wrong - in Facebook's favor (Score:5, Insightful)
The movie whitewashes their insidious behavior. Their involvement is mass censorship certainly isn't properly covered. Their involvement in election meddling is whitewashed. They have been far more involved in manipulating the 2020 US election than shown. It's long past time to start charging corporations for not listing these in-kind contributions to one political party on their taxes.
Do we want unelected big tech bureaucrats deciding our elections? That's what we have right now. Their level of involvement in developing China style social credit scores (without calling it that) and canceling people for their political views certainly was given short shift. Don't let Facebook get away with the entirely too kind retelling of their story from the Netflix movie.
Re:The movie is wrong - in Facebook's favor (Score:4, Insightful)
...and canceling people for their political views...
If their political views are based on bullshit, they may think they are being canceled.
Please, let us not confuse political views with misinformation.
If someone posts some shit about how anitfa is setting fires when the cops are saying it is a lie and please stop posting that shit and ignore that shit [nbcnews.com] and it is deleted, that is NOT suppressing someones political views. That is stopping misinformation that is harming public safety.
I actually know someone who trusts her facebook feed MORE than any other media. Why? 'Because so many sharing the information means it must be true!'
She believes in some Red Shoe membership of liberals who wear red shoes made out of aborted babies or some such nonsense. She wears no mask and uses no social distancing and makes fun of people who do - even though one of her customers DIED from Covid. She brushes that off because he was old.
Or how antifa is considered an organization when Trumps own FBI director said it was an ideology and not an organization.
Of course, when people say that antifa is this anarchist organization, I want to tell them that sure it is! It is financed by socialists who own privately held businesses that make porn with virgin porn stars who are orthodox Jews that only eat bacon and shrimp.
If anyone is lost on what I was saying, you are part of the problem.
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Such eloquence! Such poise! Such powerful and refined writing!*
I'm quite certain there was a point you were trying to make there, but it got lost amid your incoherent, ascerbic rambling.
Get back under your bridge.
(*: /s, in case that wasn't clear)
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So is Trump - he is leftist.
And so is every Evangelical Christian - they are leftist. As a matter of fact, the entire Republican party is leftist. They want government control of everything - and an elite that controls that government.
VERY Leftist.
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I'm inclined to think people that think they are being cancelled likely think that because their accounts stop getting traffic or locked out.
That's the kind of propaganda used to justify censorship for the last couple of centuries. It's amazing how much information is classified as political views in order to support this. By way of recent example the AP liter
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the AP literally just redefined a riot to mean a political protest last week
What? Let me see if I can find that... you're talking about this? [twitter.com]
New guidance on AP Stylebook Online: Use care in deciding which term best applies: A riot is a wild or violent disturbance of the peace involving a group of people. The term riot suggests uncontrolled chaos and pandemonium.
Focusing on rioting and property destruction rather than underlying grievance has been used in the past to stigmatize broad swaths of people protesting against lynching, police brutality or for racial justice, going back to the urban uprisings of the 1960s.
Unrest is a vaguer, milder and less emotional term for a condition of angry discontent and protest verging on revolt.
Protest and demonstration refer to specific actions such as marches, sit-ins, rallies or other actions meant to register dissent. They can be legal or illegal, organized or spontaneous, peaceful or violent, and involve any number of people.
Revolt and uprising both suggest a broader political dimension or civil upheavals, a sustained period of protests or unrest against powerful groups or governing systems.
In other words: the Associated Press is specifically warning against contributing to the propaganda that you are complaining about, and you are using that warning as an example of the propaganda that you are complaining about.
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You didn't actually read that before replying, did you? They start by giving the political reason for changing the definition - exactly as I previously claimed. They then offer a new word to describe rioting, in this case "unrest".
They then literally redefine protest to include violence, perhaps because they have lost a lot of credibility with the public over the last summer of calling hundreds of riots "mostly peaceful"? Let me highlight the specific section for you that you appear to have missed:
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I don't know where on earth you got the idea that protests couldn't be violent, the reason we have the phrase "non-violent protest" is because those are only one variety. Peasant revolts / riots / uprisings (so-called depending on who you're talking
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I'm in support of those people in Iran, however my definitions don't change meaning based upon the target. That means they were rioting. It just so happens that they were rioting against one of the most evil and corrupt governments on earth. I was certainly hopeful that they might overthrow the despots in charge. Without question they were on the border of revolution, personally I'm of the opinion we should have supported a revolution in Iran.
Protests are peaceful, riots are violent. The AP made worldwide h
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From 2019 [apnews.com]
From 2010 [timesargus.com]
From 1992 [nytimes.com]
Etc. There are lots more, just search for associated press and "violent protest" and any year. I don't know how you've managed to
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Their involvement is mass censorship certainly isn't properly covered.
Oh please, the ability of one to spread their ideas has always had gatekeepers. Not having a license for spectrum, not owning a printing press, not able to get monks to copy your books. Go back far enough and you might not even have been afforded with the luxury of being taught to read and write.
The concept of free expression means the government can’t shut you up if you provide your own platform for disseminating your speech. It does not mean you can interrupt a newscaster because you have some im
No rebuttal at all (Score:5, Insightful)
I read the so-called rebuttal. It's bullshit. Something a committee of "brand spin" experts would come up with.
Our News Feed product teams are not incentivized to build features that increase time-spent on our products. Instead we want to make sure we offer value to people, not just drive usage.
My only comment on that paragraph is LoL.
For example, in 2018 we changed our ranking for News Feed to prioritize meaningful social interactions and deprioritize things like viral videos. The change led to a decrease of 50M hours a day worth of time spent on Facebook. That isn’t the kind of thing you do if you are simply trying to drive people to use your services more.
50M hours/day sounds like a lot until you realize the average user spends 58 minutes a day [broadbandsearch.net] on Facebook, and Facebook has 1.4 billion daily active users. Do the math and a decrease of 50M hours/day works out to a decrease of 3.7%, or about 2 minutes less a day per user. Whoop-de-doo.
But even when businesses purchase ads on Facebook, they don’t know who you are.
Bullshit. Facebook's ad segmentation features allow ad purchasers to know exactly who they are targeting.
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For example, in 2018 we changed our ranking for News Feed to prioritize
meaningful social interactions and deprioritize things like viral videos.
The change led to a decrease of 50M hours a day worth of time spent on
Facebook. That isn’t the kind of thing you do if you are simply trying to
drive people to use your services more.
50M hours/day sounds like a lot until you realize the average user spends 58 minutes a day [broadbandsearch.net] on Facebook, and Facebook has 1.4 billion daily active users. Do the math and a decrease of 50M hours/day works out to a decrease of 3.7%, or about 2 minutes less a day per user. Whoop-de-doo.
So basically everyone is watching one less viral video a day after they stopped prioritizing viral videos and there was no increase in "social interactions". 8^)
Re:No rebuttal at all (Score:4, Insightful)
I read the so-called rebuttal. It's bullshit. Something a committee of "brand spin" experts would come up with.
Our News Feed product teams are not incentivized to build features that increase time-spent on our products. Instead we want to make sure we offer value to people, not just drive usage.
My only comment on that paragraph is LoL.
For example, in 2018 we changed our ranking for News Feed to prioritize meaningful social interactions and deprioritize things like viral videos. The change led to a decrease of 50M hours a day worth of time spent on Facebook. That isn’t the kind of thing you do if you are simply trying to drive people to use your services more.
50M hours/day sounds like a lot until you realize the average user spends 58 minutes a day [broadbandsearch.net] on Facebook, and Facebook has 1.4 billion daily active users. Do the math and a decrease of 50M hours/day works out to a decrease of 3.7%, or about 2 minutes less a day per user. Whoop-de-doo.
But even when businesses purchase ads on Facebook, they don’t know who you are.
Bullshit. Facebook's ad segmentation features allow ad purchasers to know exactly who they are targeting.
What they also failed to mention is that it WAS an incentive to keep people in Facebook as those viral videos were coming from TikTok, a competing social media platform.
Facebook:
We stopped advertising for TikTok for free and it has resulted in a fractional decrease in people's facebook time. You should be applauding our moral stance on the issue.
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Facebook goes out of it's way to ensure that it's the ONLY ecosystem people use.
Their new "look" takes it to even more extremes, putting restrictions on the ways in which their own users can reference Facebook content outside of the tightly-regulated "share" controls they impose. Even within their own social media bubble.
If Facebook was a hardware device, it wouldn't be able to plug into anything other than Facebook peripherals. And even then, Facebook would decide what degree of intra-system functionality
Standard human tactics (Score:2)
"deleting FB after watching it" (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure. Riiiight. We believe you.
People say they will. Some of them might even deactivate their account and uninstall the app... for a while! Until of course they get pressured into going back because they missed out on the party invites or can't figure out how to share pictures with others without their electronic crack dealer.
If EVERY person who commented that they'd remove FaceBook from their life actually followed through, do you know what would happen to FaceBook? NOTHING. They have your data already!
To those of you who (like me) have cut the cord of FaceBook (02/08/2012), you know I'm right.
Re:"deleting FB after watching it" (Score:4)
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I want to share a screenshot of your post but I don't see an icon for that so I'm helpless.
Oh wait, if I put my laptop facedown on our photocopier it has a Share To Twitter button.
And they call me a september, hah.
of course (Score:2)
Screw these guys.
And you can't argue with them (Score:2)
After all, who knows more about distorted views and sensationalizing social networks?
Trusting Facebook with relationships was a mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
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The Truth Shall Set You Free (Score:3)
If you recognize it.
Not wrong (Score:3)
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Nobody should... (Score:2)
...have to have a documentary tell them what's wrong with Facebook when it's been very obvious for a very long time. Maybe not the specifics, but generally. It's a frightfully invasive and disrespectful platform, IMHO for what it's worth. But, if this doc can help some remove themselves from Facebook, it's done a good job of explaining why they should.
A better rebuttla (Score:2)
Netflix uses algorithms to determine which shows will add subscribers and convince them to sit on the couch for hours on end wasting away as they stuff their faces with potato chips as the real world goes by.
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Hum... potato chips. /HomerSimpsonDroolingNoise
A distorted view? (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather than offer a nuanced look at technology, it gives a distorted view of how social media platforms work to create a convenient scapegoat for what are difficult and complex societal problems.
A distorted view? Guys, you really need to leave your little bubbles and go out and experience what is going on in the world.
All of these problems you can lay at the feet of Facebook and the other social platforms. Sure people have had crazy ideas forever, but before social networks they couldn't get together with other like-minded folks and propagate and promote their craziness to other susceptible people.
Really? (Score:3)
The rebuttal suggests that Facebook may be worried that the documentary's effects on usage.
The tobacco industry has hung on for almost 70 years after their product was definitively linked to cancer, and for probably 50 years after it became public knowledge that they had invested a lot in making cigarettes even more addictive. What's Facebook so worried about?
Maybe they're afraid of their own platform being used to disseminate the information that will eventually bring the company down. Wouldn't that be poetic justice?